1 + 0 = 1
2 – 1 = 1
1 + 20 – 20 =1
300 + 20 – 319=1
1000 – 900 – 999 = 1
How many more listings can I make to finally come to an ultimate conclusion of permutations that result in 1? Ponder what is the potential of listing all the permutations that leads to 1, considering that there are no limits to how the equations are arrange? Impossible, obviously, as the range of possibilities are limitless and unimaginable. The result may look the same, but how it is arrived at has its own different causes.
Consider that each every experience that we are having in each moment of our lives has its tale of causes that is unknown to us – and many a times we make hasty conclusions that what happened is what we have just done. Imagine walking into a temple or a church after much of a seeking elsewhere and suddenly it dawn upon us the answer we were fervently seeking – and in that precise moment we conclude that it is the space or the religion that brought us to that moment of aha, many a times making hasty conclusion in dumping what we were before and taking on the new faith. At the worst scenario, we become critical to our former faith for not answering to our calls in time of need. How narrow can our perception be when we don’t acknowledge the many causes that finally lead us to where we are.
Similarly, conclusions are ignorantly made when our realizations come many a times from triggers and we have a fixated idea that triggers are always good in waking people up, hence making us trigger-happy upon other peoples’ lives – how painful a life that can be! My wise teacher kept reminding me that conclusions are ignorant-based considering that wisdom never concludes.
If I am re-experiencing a self worth issue as what I was a day, a month or a year ago, I can’t make a conclusive idea that it comes with the same causes. If that is true, how could I then possibly judge that your issue that looks similar to mine has the same meaning of past? Do I not see that my limited knowledge of how the mind works has no capacity of realizing the immensity of conditions that brings me to experience what I am now? Making conclusions to each experience only limits and flattens the possibility of realizing something greater beyond the already-always box of mentality.
On another occasion my partner, while seeking audience with one of my respectable master, was advice to consider removing her fixated mentality that her body-heat issues have much to do with a certain food she eats or things she does or does not do. He invites her to consider being with the experience (the result) without having any meaning of causes in mind. That is a wise order considering that our little knowledge is insufficient and to make conclusive judgment only strengthens our perception making what is unreal becoming real in our next reality.
It is possible for us to observe and realize how causes bring about effect but we have no sufficient capacity of making conclusive judgment of what those causes or ultimate cause are – and that is none of our business, as it only makes us divert our attention from what is more important in our spiritual quest. Though our past has much to do with our present experience, yet making ideas out of the past is far from truth. To stop making conclusions and blame and to plunge in head-on of what is in our experience is all it takes to bring us Home. Others only delay and delude us in a merry-go-round trip – and that is what we have been doing unconsciously all this while, considering the reason why we are still here, in existence.
Present here is a passage from A Course in Miracles (Chap 15, The Holy Instant; X. The Time of Rebirth, pp 324) that I found relevant and profoundly loving:
It IS in your power to make this season [moment] holy. For it is in your power to make the time of Christ be NOW.
It is possible to do this all at once, because there is but ONE shift in perception that is necessary. For you made but ONE mistake. It SEEMS like many, but it is all the same. For, though the ego takes many forms, it is ALWAYS the same idea. What is NOT love is always fear, and nothing else.
It is not necessary to follow fear through all of the circuitous routes by which it burrows underground, and hides in darkness, to emerge in FORMS quite different from what it IS. It IS necessary to examine each one, as long as you would retain the PRINCIPLE which governs all of them. But when you are willing to regard them, NOT as separate, but as DIFFERENT MANIFESTATIONS OF THE SAME IDEA, and ONE YOU DO NOT WANT, they go together.
The idea is simply this; you believe that it is possible to be host to the ego, or hostage to God. This is the choice you think you have, and the decision that you believe that you must make. You see no other alternatives. For you can NOT accept the fact that SACRIFICE GETS NOTHING. Sacrifice is so essential to your thought-system, that salvation, APART from sacrifice, means NOTHING to you. Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love WITHOUT sacrifice. And it is THIS that you must look at; SACRIFICE IS ATTACK, NOT LOVE. If you would accept but this ONE idea, your fear of love would vanish.
Guilt CANNOT last, when the idea of sacrifice has been removed. For, if there MUST be sacrifice, as you are convinced, someone must pay, and someone must get. And the ONLY question that remains to BE decided is HOW MUCH is the price, for getting WHAT. As host to the ego, you believe that you can give ALL your guilt away, WHATEVER you think, and purchase peace. For the payment DOES NOT SEEM TO BE YOURS. While it is obvious that the ego DOES demand payment, it NEVER seems to be demanding it OF YOU. For you are unwilling to recognize that the ego, which you INVITED, is treacherous ONLY to those who think they are its host.
The ego will NEVER let you perceive this, for this recognition WILL make it homeless. For, when this recognition dawns clearly, you will NOT be deceived by ANY form the ego takes, to protect itself FROM your sight. Each form will be recognized as but a cover, for the one idea that hides behind them all. That love demands sacrifice, and is therefore INSEPARABLE from attack and fear. And that GUILT IS THE PRICE OF LOVE, which MUST be paid BY fear. How fearful, then, has God become to you, and how great a sacrifice do you believe His Love demands! For total love would demand total sacrifice. And so the ego seems to demand LESS of you than God, and of the two is judged as the LESSER of two evils, one to be feared a little, but the Other TO BE DESTROYED.
For you see love AS DESTRUCTIVE, and your only question is WHO is to be destroyed, you or another? You seek to answer this question in your special relationships, in which you are both destroyer and destroyed IN PART, but with the idea of being able to be neither completely. And this you think SAVES YOU FROM GOD, whose TOTAL Love would COMPLETELY destroy you. You think that everyone OUTSIDE yourself demands your sacrifice, but you do NOT see that ONLY you demand sacrifice, and ONLY of yourself. Yet the demand of sacrifice is so savage and so fearful, that you CANNOT accept it WHERE IT IS. But the REAL price of NOT accepting this has been so great, that you have GIVEN GOD AWAY, rather than look at it.
For, if GOD would demand total sacrifice of you, you thought it safer to project Him outward and AWAY from you, and NOT be host to Him. For to Him you ascribed the EGO’S treachery, inviting it to take His place, and PROTECT you FROM Him. And you do not recognize that it is WHAT YOU INVITED IN that would destroy you, and DOES demand total sacrifice of you. No partial sacrifice will appease this savage guest, for it is an invader who but SEEMS to offer kindness, but ALWAYS to MAKE THE SACRIFICE COMPLETE. You will NOT succeed in being PARTIAL hostage to the ego, for it keeps NO bargains, and would leave you NOTHING. Nor can you be partial HOST to it.
You will have to choose between TOTAL freedom and TOTAL bondage, for there are no alternatives but these. You have tried many compromises, in the attempt to avoid recognizing the one decision that MUST be made. And yet, it is the RECOGNITION of the decision, JUST AS IT IS, that makes the decision so easy! Salvation is simple, being of God, and therefore VERY easy to understand. But do not try to project it FROM you, and see it OUTSIDE yourself. In YOU are both the question and the Answer; the demand for sacrifice and the peace of God.
Let time heal, only then truth reveals
Never once have we never knew
In midst of pain, storylines never real
Even if “understanding” is the word
yet camouflage is delusion’s work
Forgive, surrender, seek to find
perils of pain a doorway Home
unless finger points otherwise
no one’s doing except ignorance will
Be stilled, be done Thy will
for impossible is to find its beginning
except stories conjures by perception
never once can it be trusted.
Home sweet Home
I surrender Thee.